Patience Brewster was born in 1952 and grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Her pals were the horses, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs and cows that populated the fields. Her inspiration still comes from them as well as the turtles, bullfrogs, fish and dragonflies on Forge's Pond.
Her name is real. It once belonged to the daughter of Elder William Brewster, the spiritual leader of the Mayflower and her eleventh great-grandfather. Her family is descended from Love Brewster.
She attended Philadelphia College of Art. Her degree in printmaking and bookmaking qualified her for immediate employment as a cook, a teddy bear salesperson, a barmaid and so on. In 1977 she married Holland Chauncey Gregg and, a year later, he was the one who convinced her to come out of the woods and take some of her portfolio to New York City.
She illustrated cards for several card companies. People seemed to like her images but she could not convince her art directors to use her words. She was always edited and often disappointed to find the finished card with a greeting she would NEVER EVER have written. She also found that even though art editors liked some of her more interesting or quirky work they did not think that the general public would "get" it. This went on for six years and her frustration grew. In 2000 she discovered through the grapevine that Department 56 was interested in making some of her cards into ornaments. What a surprise! It turned out that they not only liked her designs but, for the first time in history, they trusted her and trusted the public. They did not ask her to change a thing. When the first little Krinkles arrived, and they flew off the shelves. So she made more Krinkles and has been making them ever since.
In 2002 she decided to launch her own card company. Now she is spending all her time designing cards and ornaments.